Clear objectives
Imagine, if you build a house, you will definitely have to estimate the number of floors you want to build before hiring a designer. Similarly, when doing Content Marketing you must have specific goals to start planning and plotting.
Good marketing must make money. A good content marketer must know what he or she is writing for. Building a content strategy rooted in the goal is the mindset that students will learn in AIM’s Content Marketing class.
Content Marketing must be rooted in brand and business issues. No matter how well written, or how many shares the article gets, everything comes back to the basic question – what problem is your content helping the business solve?
Marketing goals come first, content goals come second. The funny thing is that most of us rush into content production, considering the number of articles as the goal but rarely see the big picture above.
FMCG, F&B or services, startups, growth or loss of market share – depending on the industry and time, content strategies will have different goals:
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase traffic to website
- Collect customer information
- Increase upsell ability for existing products
Which goal is your content team choosing as its focus? If you don’t have one, don’t hesitate to review your company’s content development plan. A small change in perspective can save you a lot of money.
Capture user insight
A solid Content Marketing strategy depends on how deeply you “dig” for insight. Think about it, the world already has too much boring Content Marketing! If you don’t say exactly what consumers want to believe, they won’t even give you a second glance. What to do to become different among countless advertisements, that is the content leader’s task in “exploiting” and “using” insight.
It’s easy to say, but finding insight is no different than ‘finding a needle in a haystack’. A common problem for content creators in the digital era is relying too much on “tools”. Social listening tool shows you what people say on the internet.
However, the culture of “showing ego” and “wanting attention” on social networks will make them act differently from normal life. Therefore, just relying on tools to “fumble” for insights is like Facebook posting: “people think…, in fact…”.
Wanting to penetrate the inner world of consumers requires you to spend time “devouring and pondering” many sources of information. Social listening tool is just one of them. Below are 5 approaches to insight that Content Marketing class students at AIM learn:
The most interesting thing after “catching” insight is approaching the problem with a really BIG idea. Big idea is simply “what you want to say” after 1000 articles. It is the root of every story you tell. Creativity helps the story spread its branches and spread the message around.
How to keep the message conveyed in a fresh and attractive way? How does content “touch” consumers? Your task is to mold “insight” into powerful messages that viewers will never forget. And when viewers nod, applaud or share “what you said”, you have succeeded!
What is content pillar?
Speaking of building a house, after the foundation is completed, pillars will be built to support the entire house. With content strategy, those pillars will be content pillars, also known as main topic groups developed from big ideas. These content pillars have a mission to guide content to become consistent to achieve the set goals.
Topic group/content group – do you see anything in common? You guessed it right. The key lies in the word group. Content Pillar has the characteristic of having to be large enough so that you can easily expand it with different formats without fear of deviation from the original orientation. Without this pillar, it’s easy to understand why you suddenly see a good Facebook post, and the website article seems a bit ‘out of place’ compared to the big idea and key message of the campaign.
Besides a flexible approach to problems, you also need to diversify content formats for each platform. Why so? Because user behavior is not the same on each channel. For example, on Facebook, the audience is increasingly lazy in carefully reviewing content.
You don’t want your content to die after a few seconds, you have to create more vivid formats like gifs, videos, 360-degree images… On the contrary, with YouTube, viewers are often less interactive and tend to watch more automatically. Therefore, only by understanding the behavior and characteristics of each channel can you choose a format that “captivates” viewers.
Content Marketing – how to multi-channel and still be consistent is a difficult problem for content leaders. Especially in the current digital development context. Content creators themselves have to be constantly creative and have a thorough understanding of digital platforms to create appropriate content.
It will be very difficult for someone who specializes in writing PR or SEO articles to be as quick and timely as those who work on social media. Similarly, for those of you who are familiar with good or fun social content, it is extremely difficult to know what a website content strategy or email content strategy is.
Once you create content, you must always improve yourself and learn about diverse types. Only then can you come up with a Content Marketing strategy that solves a business problem.
In short, Content Marketing strategy is becoming increasingly important in the competitive landscape. Don’t ignore the tricks of grabbing headlines, attracting likes and rigid article writing formulas. It’s time for a more systematic look! How does Content Marketing bring maximum benefits to businesses?
